To address problems of over- and under-treatment with preventive chemotherapy resulting in ongoing transmission of schistosomiasis, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends targeted mass drug administration (MDA) interventions at a sub-district level. In Tanzania, the lack of sub-district (ward) prevalence data has inhibited a transition to targeted treatment. Model-based prevalence estimation combined with routine surveillance data can be used to overcome this gap.

We created a geostatistical model to estimate parasitological prevalence in the wards of the Lake Zone regions of Tanzania to investigate opportunities for enabling targeted MDA for schistosomiasis. With no precedent on how outputs from a geostatistical model could be used to inform decision-making in Tanzania, this qualitative study explores perceptions on what may challenge and motivate program staff in Tanzania’s national schistosomiasis control program to integrate the models into routine planning to guide disease control interventions.

We believe that results from this study should help to motivate the WHO to standardize recommendations around using geostatistical models, like the one presented in this study, which may serve as powerful tools to better plan interventions and reduce transmission of schistosomiasis. Such recommendations may, as this study found, have a large influence on country uptake of novel tools at country level, helping them to combat a devastating disease that affects so many millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world.